Ocado opens new centre in Purfeet with 1500 new jobs
Ocado’s has opened its sixth customer fulfilment centre (CFC) in Purfleet (Essex) to boost distribution space and help cater for a wave of new customers won during the pandemic, as people embraced online shopping more than ever.
This is the third CFC to launch this year and up to 1500 people could work there once it is at full capacity. It will be Ocado’s biggest CFC behind one in Erith.
The robotic warehouse opening coincided with the one-year anniversary of Ocado Retail starting its delivery service for Marks & Spencer.
The company said that the warehouse will help increase capacity to “meet the strong demand” for online groceries across the UK. Once fully ramped, the CFC will have the capacity to deliver over 80,000 orders per week. According to the online retailer, prior to the opening of Purfleet and Andover, Ocado Retail was delivering 356,000 orders per week.
Once all three new sites that opened this year are fully ramped up, Ocado Retail will have increased capacity by 40 per cent compared with 2020, taking total potential capacity (on a pre-Covid-19 basket) to 600,000 orders per week.
“The opening of our Purfleet CFC is an exciting milestone in Ocado’s journey, enabling us to deliver to more customers than ever before,” said Melanie Smith, chief executive, Ocado Retail. “Our partnership with M&S over the last year has seen our customers regularly add a wide variety of terrific M&S products to their baskets.”
